


Of Offers, Communication, and Declarations

by TheReluctantShipper



Series: Pet Wizard [8]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Harry Has Had Enough of John's Shit, M/M, Sex, Sex as a Communication Tool, underhanded tactics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:55:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24693382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheReluctantShipper/pseuds/TheReluctantShipper
Summary: Someone tries to poach me from the Outfit.I make it clear to the person responsible how I feel about that.
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Johnny Marcone
Series: Pet Wizard [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1308146
Comments: 26
Kudos: 258





	Of Offers, Communication, and Declarations

**Author's Note:**

> \- This is (obviously) a work of fanfiction. I don't own anything but the original characters. I don't claim ownership over the characters or storyline of The Dresden Files, no matter how grateful I am for them, which is hella.
> 
> \- Thanks to the Sister Husbands, who are my best friends in the whole world, and happen to be gracious enough to also beta most of my works for me. I don't know what I'd do without you girls, but I certainly wouldn't be doing this.
> 
> You can come see me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thereluctantshipper) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TheReluctantSh1?s=09) if me sharing fan edits and bitching about writer's block floats your boat.
> 
> \- I come by any mistakes here honestly, but feel free to point them out so I can correct them.
> 
> \- Feedback is life.

Things were going…  _ Really _ well.

We both worked a lot, sure, but there was a  _ lot _ of work to do, and we were both pretty passionate about almost all of it.

Running Chicago took up almost all of Marcone’s time, especially considering the controlling, anal-retentive way he does it (the way he does  _ everything- _ it’s endearing, really, I swear). When he wasn’t being Gentleman Johnny, he was being the Baron. The Accords demanded almost as much attention and time as the Outfit did.

My own time was split between working for Marcone, my fledgling and  _ very _ unofficial PI business, and Bob working my ass off. My power, already substantial, had been growing in leaps and bounds recently. It left me scrambling to make sure my control would match it.

John and I were still managing to sneak away to any number of safehouses, though. Not as often, maybe, and maybe we spent more of those nights passed out cold next to one another than ripping each other’s clothes off, but the effort was made, dammit. It counted. Not to mention that having someone (someone trusted, someone who meant something  _ more) _ else in the bed eased the nightmares we both staunchly denied having.

We often woke tangled up in one another, and made it a point spend the morning lingering when we could. We’d wake one another up with warm coffee and lazy morning sex.

So, okay, sure, we were working a  _ lot, _ both of us. And yeah, we probably spent more time arguing and sparking off of one another than we spent being gentle. But we were okay, dammit, we were  _ fine. _

At least, I  _ thought _ we were fine.

* * *

My office was pretty far downtown in Chicago. I probably (definitely) could have gotten a nicer place, but there were several reasons not to.

The first and most important is that it’s my best tool for getting people to underestimate me. Letting people know how much you have always puts you at a disadvantage, and people knew too much about me already. So it comforted me that my dingy office in a bad neighborhood gave people the wrong impression, or at least confused them enough to put them off-kilter.

Having my crappy little office with its dinged up secondhand furniture and coffeemaker that only made terrible, burnt sludge also made me feel like a real  _ detective. _ Hokey, maybe, but it made my inner geek go all twitterpated and giddy.

And finally, possibly my favorite reason for keeping my office was that John  _ hated _ it. There was no good reason for me to be quite so tickled John’s open hostility toward the plainness of where I did business, but it amused me to no end. Probably because he ruthlessly controlled so many parts of my life, but when I chose my own office, and one he despised to boot, it was a reminder that every part of me that he had power over was because I allowed it.

He liked it, really. He never would have stuck around if I spent all of my time rolling over for him. It was for the good of  _ both _ of us that I did this to him. Honest.

The point is that it’s  _ not _ a great part of town, and my neighbors know enough about whose company I keep to be polite but not actively friendly. No one wants to be  _ too _ warm to the guy sleeping with the head of Chicago’s mafia.

Because of all that, the only warning I really had that I wasn’t alone when I stepped into my office was a half a second of instinct. That was enough to have me throwing myself to the side as soon as I took a single step inside, though, so it was enough.

Now, I don’t want to brag, but there are a few very frightening people who are very invested in my continued well-being. Since I haven’t yet been willing to let Marcone have me tailed (or chipped like a wayward dog, the dick), what that’s really resulted in is that I’ve taken a slew of self-defense classes.

I’ve trained in Aikido with Murphy, and I’ve taken some martial arts courses. Hell, I’ve done a lot of work with Cujo to make sure I can defend myself, even, and he doesn’t even  _ like _ me.

So it was kind of a bummer when I hit the wall and spun, ready to hand-to-hand combat my way out of a scuffle, only to find that my intruder was standing with his hands held out in front of him, palms towards me, in a clear sign of surrender.

He was average height with a stocky build, dressed in nondescript clothes. His golden hair was thinning up top, but the didn’t seem to be trying to hide that. His eyes were a very light, flat blue, and there was a calculating gleam in them.

“Uh.” A paragon of wit, I am.

“Dresden, right?” His voice was surprisingly nasal, grating.

I blinked.  _ “Obviously.” _ How many six and a half foot tall wizards were wandering around Chicago?

The guy snorted. “Yeah, well. Look, I’m going to reach into my coat pocket real nice and slow-like, okay?”

“Buddy,  _ you _ broke in  _ here.” _

“Just don’t vaporize me, all right?”

I glared and didn’t say anything. Generalized words like “vaporize” drive me crazy, really. Not only is it not actually possible, it is a  _ vast _ oversimplification, one that-

Anyway. Not important.

He reached into the inside of his coat pocket with exaggerated slowness. He pulled out a plain white business card. He showed it to me just as slowly (jackass), then placed it on the table against the wall where I kept the first drafts of some pamphlets I’d been working on. 

“Just came by to have a chat,” he said. “Courtesy of my boss. My  _ boss’ _ boss, if you catch my drift.”

Oh, I caught it, all right.

The forgettable clothes, the goon, the card. The fact that he’d broken into my office to have a “chat” with me. The way he’d stood just enough to the side that I’d flinch.

It just doesn’t take being involved with a mafia for very long to be able to spot the marks it leaves on someone else.

“Get out,” I growled.

His eyebrows rose, half in surprise and half in amusement. “C’mon now, I just-”

“No. Whatever offer you’re about to make, whatever little ‘extra’ you have to sweeten the pot,  _ whatever _ you have, no to all of it. Get. Out.”

“I-”   


I tilted my head down and stared at the bridge of his nose as menacingly as I knew how. “You’re about to piss me off, buddy. You may not think I’m a real wizard, but you’re about to believe in magic.” With that, I began to gather power to myself.

My intention was not to throw a spell at the guy. It would be stupid and unnecessary, bring the White Council down on my head, and was likely to hurt or kill both of us since I didn’t have my staff or my blasting rod on me. I didn’t need to do so much as light a candle, though. Not to freak out a vanilla mortal.

Gathering power can be felt by the most magically inert people. It feels like the air just before a thunderstorm, like the hairs standing up on the back of your neck when you  _ know _ the house is empty but you still check the other side of the shower curtain. It crackles against your skin, puts pressure behind your eyeballs. It’s  _ felt. _

He was good, I gave him that. His eyes widened just a fraction for half a second before his mask of amused indifference came back down, just a bit more strained this time.

He shrugged. “Whatever. I came, I tried, I got kicked out. No skin off my nose.” He gave me another bland once-over, then left my office without  _ quite _ ever turning his back on me.

_ Ugh, normies. _

Once my office door shut behind him, I quickly locked it, then walked over to slump in my chair. I let the power I’d gathered dribble away from me while I thought about what had just happened. 

Another gang, and I could safely assume it was a rival gang, had put the moves on me. Not the first time, but one of the ballsiest, to be sure. In not so many words, the goon had told me that someone  _ very _ high up was interested in “chatting” with me, when I’d gone out of my way to make it well-known that the only higher up I ever wanted to “chat” with was Marcone. It was daring, dangerous, and I was sure that if I’d let him talk, it would have been one hell of an offer.

If, of course, I’d believed even for a  _ second _ that that’s what it would have been.

The guy was too easy, really. He met me on my home turf, where I had a clear advantage. He didn’t talk over me or insist on staying. The whole thing barely took three minutes. He never dropped a name, for himself or his boss, just left me a business card.

A business card that I was sure would have a working phone number that someone would answer. Answer with that dangerously appealing offer to jump off of Marcone’s ship and onto someone else’s.

An offer, and my response, that would be meticulously recorded for a mob boss. Just not the one they wanted me to think I was talking to.

I let my head fall forward to thunk on my desk. “Hell’s  _ bells.” _

* * *

We were fine, but sometimes, John was not.

For all of his titles, Gentleman, Baron, Lord, and Signatory, John himself was surprisingly…  _ Human. _

He was obsessive about dishes in the sink, but if he hadn’t hired someone to do it, his laundry would have gone weeks sitting in a basket. He was meticulous about keeping his hands clean, but he never hesitated to kneel in the dirt to play with Lottie while I babysat. He had a hundred little idiosyncrasies and contradictions that made him  _ John _ when he was with me, and that all got hidden away to make him Marcone to everyone else.

He was also, astonishingly enough, pretty damn insecure when it came to me.

* * *

When one was the consort of a mafia don (a term that always made John wrinkle his nose and made me chuckle), it was pretty easy to walk into a meeting he was having and demand his attention. The other powerful people he worked with, though not all of them would be comfortable with me being a man, they would roll their eyes in commiseration, crack a few thinly veiled jokes at my expense, and offer to reschedule.

I didn’t do that for a few reasons. It would have painted a big fat target on both John and I’s backs, marking me as a vulnerability of his and outing him as  _ having _ a vulnerability at all. It could be misinterpreted as a power play on either his part or mine and dunk us both in hot water.

Plus, it was just  _ rude. _

So instead of bursting into whatever meeting he was currently in, I strolled in a couple of hours after Unflappable Goon Number One accosted me in my office. I’d had somethings to get… Ahem,  _ ready. _

The office building he was in that afternoon, one of several he rotated through every week, was as upscale and bland as all of them. Clean marble floors and columns, chrome and glass accents, an inoffensive and healthy potted plant in the corner. I hated it almost as much as he hated mine.

_ (“I don’t know, it has no character.” _

_ “Lack of cleanliness and steady electricity is not  _ character,  _ Harry.”) _

The secretary for this building, a cute, short redhead who had a sweet smile and took no nonsense from anyone, blinked at me as I walked up to her desk.

“Oh, Mr. Dresden. Mr. Marcone wasn’t expecting you.”

“No, he wasn’t.” I pointed to his closed office door. “He alone in there?” I knew he would be. Marcone was damn near manic about keeping normal business hours for meetings.

“Uh, yes, Mr. Dresden. His last associate just left, and Mr. Hendricks is in the security office with his team.”

I smiled.  _ Mr. Hendricks. _ Adorable.

“Great. I’m going to go in there because Mr. Marcone and I need to have a  _ talk. _ I’m going to lock the door behind me. You’re going to want to turn your computer off, I think this conversation is going to get heated.”

Her eyes widened and it would be impolite to say she lunged for her computer, but it also would have been accurate. Anyone who’d spent any time around Marcone and I was intimately familiar with how hard I was on electronics when I got fired up. They were also intimately familiar with the regularity with which Marcone managed to set me off. We’d burned through quite a few computers before I got into the habit of warning people to turn them off.

I nodded to her and made m way into Marcone’s terrible office.

In there, too, it was all too-clean lines and impersonal furniture and colors. The blinds were open, slanting the orange almost-evening light across the room. IT lit half of Marcone’s face, sharpening his hard edges and making him look every inch the dangerous man he was.

My traitorous libido, already sitting up and begging, twitched pitifully. What can I say? I’ve got some issues. A lot of them are named John.

I stayed by the door while he powered off his Blackberry and his computer. I knew he’d be pretty much done by now, and whatever was left could wait.

We had  _ business, _ John and I.

Once everything was safely turned off, he looked up at me.

“Harry.” His voice was warm but cautious, which was fair. In the year or so we’d been sleeping together, I could count the times I’d dropped by his office without an appointment on one hand and have plenty of fingers left over.

“John,” I replied. My own voice was surprisingly even, especially considering that I was already shrugging my duster off and letting it drop to the ground.

John’s eyebrows rose in a question, but when I stripped my t-shirt off and let it fall on top of my duster, his cool green eyes heated fast.

He pushed away from his desk as I stalked around it. He swivelled in his chair to face me.

“To what do I-”

“Shut up,” I said softly, reaching down to unbuckle my belt. “Just… Shut up.”

He obliged, but the eyebrow stayed raised while I finished undressing. The cool air had goosebumps rising on my arms and legs, and I felt pleasantly exposed to his hungry gaze. My cock hung half-hard against my leg.

John’s chair was a sturdy thing that we’d utilized for this very purpose before, so I didn’t hesitate to crawl into his lap. For his part, John didn’t hesitate to place his calloused, scarred hands on my waist, but he huffed out a soft breath in surprise, which was, once again, fair.

Historically, I was always insistent on us being on equal footing in the bedroom. We were both naked, we were both half-dressed, we were both on the bed or floor or couch. No looming over me, no kinky games. Our sex life was painfully tame, really, not that John ever seemed to have a problem with it.

This was new. Him fully clothed and me naked in his lap like a floozy? It was a power imbalance, plain and simple. It was me making myself blatantly and willingly vulnerable to him, baring myself in the daylight while he remained covered. It was out of the ordinary behavior, for sure.

I didn’t want to be thinking about all of that just then, though. I didn’t want to think about how tightly wound John was, how neurotic he was, how twitchy and prone to bolting I was. How the two of us had issues stacked on issues. There were about fifty reasons not to do what I was doing and to put my damn pants on and talk about this like adults.

But John was  _ mine, _ dammit, and I was his. Maybe not the way either of us expected, but we were irrevocably tied up in one another. Magically speaking, that had significance. Emotionally, too.

Mostly, though, John Marcone had a damn good face that I really wanted to kiss. So I did.

We started slow, a belated  _ hello _ and  _ welcome back _ and  _ I missed you, _ just like always. His hands settled more firmly on my hips and I draped my arms across the back of his chair, enveloping him nicely. The material of his pants was soft as hell, but just coarse enough against the insides of my thighs to make me aware of it, aware of the way his bulk kept me splayed open. It made my cock rise up from half hard to throbbing in less than a minute.

I ignored it for the time being. I kissed John thoroughly, cradling his jaw in my hand so I could feel the way his mouth was moving against mine. I rolled my hips, leisurely grinding against his own rapidly filling erection through the layers of clothes that separated us. His breath caught for just a moment.

His hands roamed up my back as we kissed, our tongues sliding against one another. He was warm, John was always warm, and it elicited a shiver as he slowly ran the fingers of one hand down the knobs of my spine. His other hand traced my collarbone, touch feather-light. He brushed them down my chest until he circled one of my nipples with his thumb. At my sharp exhale, he took it and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. My back arched, pushing into his hand, just this side of shameless. 

“Extraordinary,” he murmured into my mouth. The lights started to flicker overhead.

_ “John.” _

He chuckled at my impatience, an almost condescending sound that always made my blood run hot. He finally moved his other hand down to get a good, rough handful of my ass, where he ran into my surprise for this little rendezvous.

He jerked back in surprise and stared, unguarded for once, into my eyes. “Harry?” his voice was rough with desire.

I smirked. “Do you still keep condoms in your desk?”

He nodded silently and I rose up on my knees enough to let him unbuckle his belt and tug his cock free. John’s not as long as me, but he’s thick and he knows what he’s doing with it, which is better, anyway.

I was struck with the urge to slither down to the floor and suck him at the sight. The head of his cock was shiny with precome and I  _ wanted, _ but I did not spend twenty minutes stretching myself and putting a plug in to  _ not _ make my point.

John’s questing fingers found their way back to the base of said plug as soon as I settled back down onto him. He pressed intently, enough to make me gasp and rock against the pressure. Sparks danced up and down my spine, sending shuddering heat through my limbs. He grasped the base of the plug and pulled it out slowly until the widest part of it held me open. I whined softly and pressed our mouths together again, sloppy and hot and needy.

John responded in kind, then swallowed my shout when he shoved the plug back in. He fucked me with it for a while, turning me into a pliant mess in his arms. John liked me like that, and I normally fought him more, made him work for it, but I wanted him more than I wanted the battle just then.

An eon later, he pulled it all the way out, leaving me open and aching. I came back to myself long enough to pull the condom out of the drawer, open it, and fumble it on over his cock. I gave him a few strokes to see his face tighten in pleasure because it was one of my favorite sights. Then I pulled myself up enough to position him appropriately and  _ finally _ sink down on him slowly, inch by burning, gut-wrenching inch.

Sex with John is… Intense. It’s all-consuming and scorching. The way the steadiness in his green eyes fractures until they’re boring into me, as helplessly obsessed with me as I am with him, it kills me every time.

After a year, our bodies held few surprises from one another. John knew where to notch his thumbs against my hip bones to make my eyes close to savor the feeling, he knew just which angle to tip me back to to make it so, so good for both of us. In no time, he had us both gritting back moans and holding onto one another with bruising force in the face of our rising pleasure.

Before the heat in my belly could overwhelm me, I took control back, slammed down on him, and refused to let him move me.

He tried to gather himself enough to hit me with his cool, Gentleman Johnny look. The sweat gathering at his temples and his heaving breath gave him away, though.

I, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide the way my thighs quivered and my heart raced. This wasn’t about fighting with him or hiding from him, not today.

I meant his gaze head-on and spoke as intently as I possibly could.

“You can keep testing me, John. I’ve passed a lot of tests, I don’t mind. You can keep sending goons to scare the shit out of me and make me bogus job offers. If you want to keep it like this, we can keep playing it this way.”

A few beats of silence, then, begrudgingly, “... Or?”

I smirked. My John wasn’t slow on the uptake, even balls deep in me.

Well, mostly.

“Or, you pull your head out of your ass and  _ use _ that big brain of yours.” In a gesture that I couldn’t have possibly justified or explained if I’d tried, I ran a hand through his hair (fondly).

“I’m loyal to  _ you, _ you fucking nut. Not the Outfit. I guess to Chicago, too, but mostly it’s  _ you, _ John.”

He stared at me for several moments, until I felt compelled to speak again.

_ “Just _ you,” I whispered.

Another endless beat stretched between us. He looked at me, gobsmacked and off-balance and searching. I looked back, calm and a little amused and a lot of emotions I wasn’t prepared to give names to, probably never would be.

The moment passed when he surged against me, one hand holding the back of my head so he could kiss me harshly. The other arm wrapped around my waist and guided me to sit up just enough so he could hold me still while he fucked up into me.

I shuddered and gasped and finally gave in to him (guess I had some fight in me after all). I let the sensations bombard me, the way he was pulling my hair, the scrape of his clothes against my bare flesh, the way he filled me up and held me down and took over my every sense. Stars, but it was sexy, all of that ruthlessness focused on controlling me.

When I came, my vision whited out as hot pleasure washed over me, but not soon enough for me to miss the way the lightbulbs burst above us in a shower of sparks.

John shuddered beneath me, slammed me down so he was buried in me to the hilt, and bit my shoulder  _ hard _ as he let himself come, too. I rode it out, cradling his head to my shoulder and trying to catch my breath.

When the sweat began to cool on our bodies and the stickiness started to get uncomfortable, John finally lifted his head to look at me. His emotions were on the surface now, completely open to me. It sent a thrill through my heart.

“I will… Take what you’ve said into consideration.”

I grinned and kissed him. Message received.

(Well, probably.)

**Author's Note:**

> \- We're almost at the end of _Pet Wizard,_ and I'm pretty dang sad about it, y'all.


End file.
